Bill Murray

• 1. Introduction

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  Bill Murray turned twenty on the 21st of September 1970, and he spent part of that birthday in police custody at Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Officers found 10 pounds of cannabis in his luggage, which he had allegedly intended to sell. A joke exposed him. He had told the passenger in the next seat that he had packed a bomb. He was convicted and sentenced to probation.

  That young man grew into an American actor and comedian with two Primetime Emmy Awards and an Academy Award nomination. Many fans treat him less like a movie star than like a folk hero.

  This documentary follows the odd path between those two pictures. How did a deadpan delivery travel from sketch comedy to serious drama? Why do certain directors keep casting him again and again? And why do stories about his temper and his elusiveness follow him everywhere?

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• 2. Evanston to Saturday Night

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  Murray was born on the 21st of September 1950 in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. His mother, Lucille, worked as a mail room clerk. His father, Edward Murray II, sold lumber. The family was Irish Catholic, with a paternal grandfather from County Cork and maternal ancestors from County Galway.

  Murray had eight siblings, and several of them made names of their own. John, Joel and Brian Doyle-Murray all became actors. His sister Nancy became an Adrian Dominican nun in Michigan. She toured the country in two one-woman programs, portraying Catherine of Siena and Dorothy Stang.

  In 1967, when Murray was 17, his father died at the age of 46 from complications of diabetes. As a boy, Murray had read children's biographies of frontier heroes such as Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok and Davy Crockett. As a teenager he worked as a golf caddy to pay for the Jesuit school Loyola Academy. He also sang lead in a rock band called the Dutch Masters and acted in school and community theater.

  Regis University in Denver came next, with pre-medical courses, but he quit quickly and went home to Illinois. The school gave him an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree in 2007.

  His real education began when his older brother Brian Doyle-Murray got him into Chicago's Second City, the improvisational comedy troupe. There he studied under Del Close. In 1974 Murray moved to New York City, where John Belushi recruited him as a featured player on The National Lampoon Radio Hour.

  The following year, the Off-Broadway National Lampoon Show led to his first television job, on ABC's Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. That program lasted one season and was canceled in early 1976. A rival variety show, NBC's Saturday Night, had debuted the same season. Murray then worked in Los Angeles with TVTV, a so-called guerrilla video commune.

  When Chevy Chase left NBC's Saturday Night Live, Murray joined the cast for its second season. He stayed for three seasons, from 1977 to 1980, and won a Primetime Emmy Award for writing. In 1978 he appeared in the mockumentary All You Need Is Cash as Bill Murray the K. The character was a send-up of the New York radio host Murray the K. The film grew from a Rutland Weekend Television sketch that Monty Python's Eric Idle brought to the show. During those early seasons Murray was also romantically involved with his castmate Gilda Radner.

  His first starring film role came in Meatballs in 1979. Soon afterward he began working with a writer-director who would shape his biggest hits.

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• 3. Ghostbusters and Paris

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  In the early 1980s Murray teamed up with the writer-director Harold Ramis on a string of box-office hits. They made Caddyshack in 1980 and Stripes in 1981. Murray also portrayed Hunter S. Thompson in Where the Buffalo Roam in 1980 and took a role in Tootsie in 1982.

  On the 1st of February 1982, Murray was the very first guest on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman. He returned for the first episode of Letterman's CBS show on the 30th of August 1993. Years later, on the 20th of May 2015, he was Letterman's final guest when the host retired.

  Meanwhile, Murray was chasing a different kind of film. He co-wrote an adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's novel The Razor's Edge, which would be his first starring role in a drama. To get it financed, he agreed with Columbia Pictures to star in Ghostbusters. The role of Dr. Peter Venkman had originally been written for John Belushi.

  The trade turned out lopsided. The Razor's Edge was filmed before Ghostbusters opened, and it flopped at the box office. Ghostbusters became the highest-grossing film of 1984 and, at that time, the highest-grossing comedy ever made.

  Disappointed by the failure of the drama, Murray stepped away from acting for four years. He studied philosophy and history at the Sorbonne in Paris and frequented the Cinematheque there. He spent time with his family at their home in the Hudson River Valley, where his second son, Luke, was born. His only film appearance in that stretch was a cameo in Little Shop of Horrors in 1986.

  He did not vanish from performing entirely. Murray joined public readings in Manhattan organized by the playwright-director Timothy Mayer. He also appeared in a stage production of Bertolt Brecht's A Man's a Man.

  He came back with Scrooged in 1988 and Ghostbusters II in 1989. In 1990 he made his first and only attempt at directing, co-directing Quick Change with the producer Howard Franklin. A few years later, a production with Ramis would strain their friendship.

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• 4. Groundhog Day

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  Frank Oz directed What About Bob? in 1991, with Richard Dreyfuss as Murray's co-star. Two years later, Murray starred in Groundhog Day, the fantasy comedy directed by Harold Ramis. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post praised the performance. "Murray is a breed unto himself, a sort of gonzo minimalist," he wrote. He called it easily Murray's best movie.

  That same year he made Mad Dog and Glory with Robert De Niro and Uma Thurman. Vincent Canby of The New York Times enjoyed watching De Niro and Murray play against type with such ease.

  Behind the scenes, Groundhog Day came at a price. Murray and Ramis fell out during production. The screenwriter Danny Rubin said, "They were like two brothers who weren't getting along." Their creative differences ended a fruitful film partnership in 1993.

  Murray reconciled with Ramis just before Ramis died in February 2014. At the 86th Academy Awards, Murray honored his old director.

  The film itself kept returning. For an ad that aired during the 2020 Super Bowl, Murray stepped back into the story. In it he steals the groundhog and drives him to various places in an orange Jeep Gladiator.

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• 5. Rushmore to Tokyo

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  Space Jam in 1996 had Murray appear as himself alongside Michael Jordan. That was a lighter moment in a stretch of mixed fortunes. After Groundhog Day he took supporting roles in Tim Burton's Ed Wood in 1994 and Peter Farrelly's Kingpin in 1996. His starring turns in Larger than Life in 1996 and The Man Who Knew Too Little in 1997 pleased neither critics nor audiences.

  Then came Wes Anderson's Rushmore in 1998, with Jason Schwartzman and Olivia Williams. Critics praised Murray warmly. The New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association all gave him Best Supporting Actor. In Los Angeles he tied with Billy Bob Thornton for A Simple Plan.

  Murray chose to lean into drama, with Wild Things in 1998 and Cradle Will Rock in 1999. In 2000 he played Polonius in Michael Almereyda's Hamlet, opposite Ethan Hawke. That film drew mixed reviews. On the 22nd of May 2000 he also played Luther Billis in a concert version of the musical South Pacific at Lincoln Center.

  In 2003 came Lost in Translation, his first film with the director Sofia Coppola. Murray played an aging movie star in Tokyo to shoot a Suntory whiskey commercial. Feeling isolated, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with an American woman named Charlotte, played by Scarlett Johansson.

  Roger Ebert wrote, "Bill Murray has never been better." The performance earned him a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe and an Independent Spirit Award. He was considered a favorite for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Sean Penn won it instead, for Clint Eastwood's Mystic River. On the film's DVD, Murray called it his favorite of all his films.

  Not every choice in those years was a prestige one. Murray voiced Garfield in Garfield: The Movie in 2004. He later said he took the part because he mistakenly thought the screenplay, co-written by Joel Cohen, was the work of Joel Coen.

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• 6. A Director's Muse

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  Raleigh St. Clair, a meek neurologist and husband of Margot Tenenbaum, was Murray's role in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums in 2001. Gene Hackman, Owen Wilson and Gwyneth Paltrow were among the cast. In 2004 Murray played Steve Zissou in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, an oceanographer-filmmaker modeled on Jacques Cousteau. The film bombed at the box office and drew mixed reviews, though Murray's performance won praise. Over the decades since, it has built a cult following.

  Moonrise Kingdom in 2012 competed for the Palme d'Or at the 65th Cannes Film Festival. In 2016 the BBC placed it on a list of the greatest films of the twenty-first century. The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014 earned nine Academy Award nominations and four wins. Murray's brief part in it shared in the Actor Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

  The Anderson relationship ran far longer than most. Isle of Dogs premiered at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival in 2018. The French Dispatch was Murray's ninth Anderson film. Its release was pulled twice during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it finally premiered at Cannes in 2021. The Phoenician Scheme in 2025 was his tenth. Murray is also the godfather to Anderson's daughter.

  Jim Jarmusch is another filmmaker he returns to. In Coffee and Cigarettes in 2003 Murray played himself, hiding out in a coffee shop. In Broken Flowers in 2005 he played Don Johnston, who sets out to visit four women after receiving a mysterious letter. Roger Ebert put it this way. "No actor is better than Bill Murray at doing nothing at all, and being fascinating while not doing it." The Dead Don't Die followed in 2019.

  Sofia Coppola brought him back for On the Rocks in 2020, opposite Rashida Jones. Critics praised his performance, and he received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Five years earlier, Coppola had directed him in A Very Murray Christmas, a Netflix holiday special with Amy Poehler, George Clooney and Miley Cyrus. It was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.

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• 7. The Murricane

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  Dan Aykroyd gave Murray the nickname "The Murricane" for his mood swings. Murray has his own explanation for his reputation. He said he only earned it from "people I didn't like working with." Jim Jarmusch, Wes Anderson and Sofia Coppola, he added, know what work is.

  A 1978 confrontation with Chevy Chase shows how personal it could get. Chase had returned to Saturday Night Live as guest host, and Murray confronted him shortly before the broadcast. Murray later called it "an Oedipal thing, a rupture." The cast felt angry that Chase had left, he said, and he was the one chosen to say so. They later became friends and starred together in Caddyshack.

  Not every clash ended so warmly. Murray has said he did not get along with the director Richard Donner during the making of Scrooged. Donner called him superbly creative but occasionally as difficult as any actor. On Lost in Translation, Coppola said Johansson and Murray did not get along, though she also called him a lot of fun to work with. Johansson later said he was in a hard place and that they have reconciled.

  The most serious episode came in April 2022, when production of the film Being Mortal was suspended after an accusation of unspecified inappropriate behavior. His accuser received a private settlement of $100,000. Murray abandoned the film.

  In 2025 Murray described what happened. He said he kissed a woman while both wore masks, something he had done to others before because he thought it was funny. He added that he does not go many days or weeks without thinking about it. Wes Anderson defended him. Johansson said the pandemic and the allegation had changed and humbled him.

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• 8. Voicemail and Ballparks

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  Murray has no agent and no manager. Offers reach him through a personal telephone number with a voicemail box that he checks only now and then. That habit reportedly kept him out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Monsters, Inc., The Squid and the Whale, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Little Miss Sunshine. He seems content with it. "If you have a good script, that's what gets you involved," he has said.

  Away from sets, his loyalties lie with Chicago teams, especially the Cubs, the Bears and the Bulls. He was a guest color commentator for the Cubs' game against the Montreal Expos on the 17th of April 1987. He was at the Cubs' historic Game Seven victory in the 2016 World Series, alongside John Cusack, Eddie Vedder and Bonnie Hunt. He also sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at Wrigley Field during a 2016 World Series game.

  His baseball life also reaches into the business side. In 1978 he took two at-bats for the Grays Harbor Loggers, a minor league team, and was credited with one hit. That left him with a lifetime batting average of .500. He later founded and part-owned the St. Paul Saints, selling his interest in 2023. Through the Goldklang Group he owns or owned parts of the Charleston RiverDogs, the Hudson Valley Renegades and the Brockton Rox. In 2012 the South Atlantic League inducted him into its Hall of Fame.

  Murray is a student of the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff. He has experienced symptoms of depression and has said that art and music helped ease past episodes. In 2017 he recorded New Worlds, an album pairing his singing and literary recitations with classical musicians, released through Verve Records. In 2022 he recited poetry and sang with the cellist Jan Vogler in a production that reached cinemas.

  In 2016 the Kennedy Center awarded Murray the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Ebert had captured the appeal with one line. "He is Hamlet in a sitcom world." The theater scholar Octavian Saiu praised how Murray can "bring out the light in them," meaning the people around him.

  In 2025 he came back to Saturday Night Live for its 50th anniversary special, ranking his favorite "Weekend Update" anchors. His filmography already lists a 2026 title, Diamond Jimbo.

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